In Modo Di
by SaturnXK
Summary: It's strange, isn't it, how love changes you in ways you never expect. Some of the changes are large, very noticeable, grand, while others are small and minor, changes that you really have to look for, otherwise you'll miss it. – NejiTen. AU. Oneshot.


**Just a short NejiTen story. **

_**In modo di**_** – in the art of, in the style of (a musical term)**

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Nervousness tasted like a desert. Arid, crippling deserts with harsh sands that dry out your mouth and left it waterless and parched and desperate. That was all I felt right now. That was all I could taste. I could taste the desert.

She was coming, I knew. I asked her to meet me, because we needed to talk. And she had agreed, but she wasn't aware of the contents of our 'talk'. It was frustrating how easily she could unhinge me without trying to. I didn't even know I had this stuttering side to me, because before I met her, I was always the confident one, the one teasing other friends about their feelings.

"Neji."

I heard her voice behind me. It was quite deep for a girl's, but undeniably female, and its low hum sent a wave of anxiety and another gust of desert wind to blow through me.

My hands fisted themselves, and I mentally counted to ten before turning to look at her.

"Hi, Tenten," I said. I could hear a quiver in my voice. The corners of my lips shot up.

Tenten stood before me, her narrow eyes curved into crescent moons. A small wrist grasped the strap of her bag, and the telltale tinkle of her silver rabbit bell chimed through the air. Her other hand, with a small scar across the palm (a result of clumsiness) held a stack of sheets with scribbles of notes and treble clefs and bass lines which fluttered in the wind. She brushed back a strand of long brown hair, and I found myself following her movements.

"Sorry I late," Tenten said. A crease formed between her eyebrows. "Ino want to talk to me. She talk too much, like a spring bee."

But affection swallowed her words, softening the blow.

I laughed, and we walked together, footsteps in synch.

When I first met her six months ago here, in this very hallway, she was shy and silent, overshadowed by my louder, more obnoxious friends, and I didn't paid her much attention. She was an outsider, and I wasn't fond of quiet girls. They were annoying to talk to, always stammering and turning pink in the face. I avoided them if I could. The Tenten six months ago would never have dreamed of mock-complaining about her friends. She had grown.

In my mind, I was searching for places to talk in private. It came up blank, and in the end I just opened a random door to an empty classroom and I pulled her in.

Tenten had learned long ago not to question my sudden actions. Because I had always been spontaneous, and she once said that she liked that about me.

It was a music room. Not one that I frequented – I lived in the art department – but I had stuck with Tenten long enough to know what one looked like. It smelled like a concoction of paper and air-conditioning, and, like everything else in this university, a mixture of dedication and hard work. A drum-kit sat in the corner, tom-toms worn out and cymbals slightly askew. Tenten went over, footsteps echoing in the silence, and adjusted them, the perfectionist in her showing its colours.

"Do you remember the first time you talk to me?" Tenten asked suddenly, fingers trailing along the snare drum.

"Yeah," I said. I stared at her for a while. "Of course I do."

It was two weeks after our official meeting that we held an actual conversation. A professor had been talking to her in a corner, talking to her too fast and using too many big words. She had this frantic look on her face, a fox surrounded by hounds. Something akin to pity had tugged inside me, and I hovered behind the professor until they were finished. I didn't usually help people – I was the type of guy who would let the door slam in a woman's face because I was rude like that – but I had thought, for no reason at all, that I should do my random act of kindness that could last me for the next ten years.

So I waited, and when the professor had finally stalked away, I had opened my mouth to speak, but then was shocked into silence. In the all the fifty-seven times I had spotted her, Tenten always looked perfectly fine. Not this time. I would never forget the way she covered her small mouth with a scarred hand, lifting the other to scrub furiously at the moisture in her reddened eyes.

I had stepped closer, gaining her embarrassed attention, and explained, in plainer terms, what the professor had meant. She had taken a shuddering breath and faintly stated that she had merely panicked at the onslaught of words. That she was okay. That she was grateful for my help.

Then, she smiled. It was a simple, ordinary smile.

"It was nice," Tenten said, breaking me out of my thoughts. She rested on the throne of the drum-kit. "And you offer to walk me to class, even though it make you late to your own."

I nodded.

That one walk had turned into two. Then three, and soon I was with her between classes, teaching her English, trying not to laugh at her strange pronunciations, listening to her grit her teeth and force out the unwilling song-notes, and it was during these exchanges I found out that quiet people weren't really so bad after all, once you got to know them.

"You have changed," Tenten continued, startling me again off memory lane. "You were rude when we meet for first time. Very… unmanly. Stubborn. Hard-headed."

I snorted, but knew she was right. That was the thing about Tenten. She didn't lie. She didn't sugarcoat things, like so many other people. She stated the absolute truth, even if it wasn't pleasant to hear. Her insensitive demeanour surprised me, though, because I had naively stereotyped her Japanese background into one of politeness and serenity.

She _was_ polite, except she said harsh things with a sweet smile.

"But you nicer now," Tenten chuckled. "Good. It is good."

Her expression settled, eyes roaming my face. She had nice eyes, I realised. And I told her so, the compliment just slipping out my mouth like water through sand.

A few seconds passed in silence as the weight of what I just said lowered on the both of us. This was it; this was the true reason I had wanted to meet her.

Her cheeks had blossomed, and she fidgeted with her rabbit bell before spluttering out her thanks. She looked cute when she blushed.

"You know," she said slowly, threading her fingers together, "in music, there is something called dissonance, yeah?"

I nodded, if only to make the awkwardness in the air dissipate. Tenten was studying to be a music composer, and I swear that nothing has sounded more beautiful than one of her pieces.

"It is when harmony, or chord, or interval, sound… unstable."

She stopped, swallowed, and went on.

"For long time, I feel… uneasy. Unstable. Like dissonance. My parents send me here to study, and I choose music… Not doctor or lawyer. Music. I is ashamed a little bit. You understand, Neji?"

My head cocked, but I didn't say anything. She knew what my answer was. Her shattered sentences made more sense to me than the clipped, solid ones of my angry mother, who had practically disowned me because I wanted to be an artist. I understood all too well.

"My parents do not mind. But I still guilty." Tenten lowered her gaze. "But I meet you, and you help me. You teached me. That it is okay to love what you love."

She stopped again, seeming to gather her thoughts. I just waited patiently without speaking.

"Now, I feel like resolution. When a chord move from dissonance to consonance. I is feeling stable, steady, and it is because you help me."

Tenten gave me a wry grin, hair swaying gently as she tilted her head coyly.

"In Japan, we do confessions," she said. "But I not in Japan now, so I think I have to do this the western way. What is your saying?"

"When in Rome, do as the Romans do," I answered. My mouth was on autopilot. "But, you know, I don't really, uh…"

Tenten scrunched up her face.

"This hard," she said. "Maybe I just confess to you Japanese way?"

I responded with an intelligent, "You… huh?"

Tenten looked like she was restraining herself from laughter.

"Neji," she said clearly. "I like you. Do you want to go out with me?"

Her lines were smooth, rehearsed, as she had been practicing for this moment for a long time. I had, too, but I never expected to be on the receiving end of the question that _I _had been meaning to ask _her_.

"Um, sure."

All of a sudden, my brain resurrected itself.

"I would love, uh, I mean like, that." My tongue, unfortunately, was still dead.

She dropped the rabbit bell, and its chimes tinkled clearly through the air.

Just like her.

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**Here, Tenten is a Chinese girl born and raised in Japan. Neji is Japanese as well, but born and raised in whatever English-speaking country you want them to be in. His Japanese is a little dodgy. Hehe.**

**And my, oh my, I haven't done this for a while (posted a new story/chapter). FF has really changed a lot, hasn't it?**


End file.
